12/13/2008: "2008 Flicks"

Hi All,

So, back for one of these infrequent posts. Now, as you know, I'm a big movie buff. I'm so buff on the movies, it's really quite sick. And although I don't think it was a particularly great year for movies, at least by my toting, I thought I'd share my thoughts on a few of this years' personally memorable ones. Some memorable because I really enjoyed them, some memorably poor, and some neither good nor bad but simply memorable for reasons that a movie can sometimes be.

CHOKE: Saw this one on the other end of the city, as that was the only place it was playing. It's based on a Chuck Palahniuk book, perhaps the first one I ever read. It concerns a sadsack---played by Sam Rockwell, who is always a good bet as a performer; I saw him again in THE GREEN MILE, playing on TV the other week, and he was solid in that, too, although overall that's a solid flick---who works at a historical reenactment village and fakes choking at restaurants so that he can be hiemliched, saved, by random diners. It is hugely faithful to the book, and Palahniuk himself gets a wordless cameo at the end. Rockwell's character is also a sex addict and entrusted with the care of his senile mother (Anjelica Huston, who I think is fabulous), so there are some scenes of the 'black humor' variety: who knew scatalogical perversions and rampant senility could be funny? Well, to some it won't be. I guess I was thinking this was going to be ... not great. I can't say why I felt that way; just an inkling. And it wasn't a homerun, but it was pretty damn good, and faithful, and that was great to see.

BURN AFTER READING: I don't know where I'd put this. My initial sense of this Coen bro's offering is: a letdown. After NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, especially. Apart from a few funny one-note gags and their trademark 'violence kindling out of nothingness' scenes, there wasn't a lot to commend this movie. Brad Pitt playing a goofball personal trainer with streaked hair? John Malkovich as an at-the-end-of-his-tether CIA operative? Tilda Swinton with her brittle persona and snowstorm skin? George Clooney ... ? I like all these actors, plus Frances McDormand, and it seemed like a workable enough idea. But it's really just sort of underdeveloped and jumpy and things end without resolution. As often enough happens in a Coen bro's movie. And I must say that, almost without exception, their movies improve upon second viewing. There were quite a few---Fargo, the Big Lebowski---that left me nonplused upon initial viewing but grew on my like some toxic fungus with later viewings. So, maybe this one will be the same. Or maybe it goes on their blooper reel with THE LADYKILLERS and INTOLERABLE CRUELTY.

THE DARK KNIGHT: Well, what can be said? A good flick. Solid, except Christian Bale's voice change as Batman was sort of grating. Like he'd just swallowed a mouthful of shredded brillo pads. A long flick but it didn't feel long. I'm not sure I'm down with all the meta-textual blah-blahing I read about the movie as representative of a certain societal shift or whatever; it's a good, dark, superhero movie. Reading too much into it seems like cinematic navel-gazing.

FUNNY GAMES: Here's one where the director---by all acounts a fussy, semi-ridiculous fellow---really wants you to meta-textualize his movie. So much so that he has his characters stare at the camera, breaking that fourth wall by directly addressing us, the viewers. It's basically a torture movie. I don't know if 'Torture-porn' works, because there's not a lot of direct on-camera gore. Basically, it's: these two white-gloved teenage sadists dressed like they're on day passes from Exeter Academy terrorize and murder a family in a secluded rich-person's cottage (more a mansion). The inference is they're working their way around the cottages, killing everybody. There's no explanation given as to why, which is part of it. Listen, this is one of those that falls under the 'memorable' category. I cannot say it's good---though it's not that the violence or subject matter makes me morally opposed---but I cannot say it's bad. Some of it is very, very good. It's a clean, Chinese Finger trap of a movie: the characters get locked in, they cannot get free. The director ensures that. But it's preachy, it overreaches its ambitions, and it's pretentious in that it (he, the director) insinuates that he's teaching us something about ourselves as viewers that we don't already know. But man, it is memorable. The way Naomi Watts is dispatched at the end ... COLD.

IN BRUGES: Great little flick. Basically, the tale of two hitmen who are forced to hole up in Bruges, a city in Belgium, after a hit goes horribly awry. Colin Farrell, who I can take or leave though he has been very good, is the young hitman. The older hitman, played by Brendan Gleeson, is fantastic. In fact, I would have to put Gleeson near the top of my favorite character actors: www.imdb.com/name/nm0322407 . He has that ability to play paternal/vicious that, to my mind, is unparalelled. I go down his movie appearances on IMDB and I can remember his role in every one of them I've seen. Fantastic in GANGS OF NEW YORK. Ditto 28 DAYS LATER. Ditto THE BUTCHER BOY (which is another flick in the FUNNY GAMES vein). Every time I see Gleeson, I'm happy. And in this movie he's similarly fantastic. He has that ability to play a character who, at root, is capable of great violence and menace, and yet he manages to infuse it with a sense of goodness totally at odds with some of the things he'll do. It's a rare talent, and maybe it doesn't function beyond the bounds of certain supporting character roles (though maybe it does) but as Gleeson largely plays smaller parts he's always solid. Anyway, check this one out for Gleeson, but also for Farrell and Ralph Fiennes as the crazily despotic mob boss. Written by Irish playwright Martin McDonagh, well celebrated for his dialogue and rightfully so.

INDIANA JONES FOUR: George Lucas, especially, should be ashamed. I don't know what it is about him---and I'm not a massive fanboy, so this won't be a rant---but he seems bound and determined to slowly water down and erase most of the fond feelings viewers have for his chief accomplishments, STAR WARS and the INDY franchise, by pumping out listless, uninspired ... I won't call it dreck, because it's always well-done and generally well-acted, but a pale immitation of the original. Watering stuff down so that new generations will look at their fathers and mothers with repelled stupefaction and say: "This is the best of your generation?" To which the parents must reply: "It used to be a hell of a lot better." I could understand it Lucas had frittered his money away on failed slant-drilling operations and crippled Arabian racehorses and needed the dosh to get Skywalker Ranch out of hock, but he's pumping out this dross for reasons that outstrip by ability to understand. That scene where what's-his-nose, the kid from TRANSFORMERS, is swinging on vines with the fucking monkeys ... I think I watched a good deal of my cherished childhood cinematic memories vanish in a puff of monkey-scat-smelling smoke. Nobody has been more ill-used by modern-day computer generated effects (or has used them to more ill effect) than Lucas. His STAR WARS effects were great. He couldn't GET Indy swinging on CGI vines with CGI monkeys in the first movie, so he didn't; he was creatively handcuffed by the limitations of technology, thank god. Just because you CAN have a person swinging on a vine---keeping pace with a speeding Jeep, no less---doesn't mean you NEED to do so, George.

SISTERHOOD OF THE TRAVELLING PANTS 2: I laughed. I cried. I switched pants with a scabby-knuckled hobo on the way out of the theater. I was magic. It was heaven.

BIGGER, STRONGER, FASTER: A steroid documentary. I liked this one a hell of a lot. The director focusses on his own brothers and their use of 'roids. It's a clearsighted look at the issue. Also, I loved KING OF KONG, though that came out last year.

There are a few I'm looking forward to before years' end: GRAN TORINO, Frank Miller's adaptation of THE SPIRIT. But overall, unfortunately, for me, not a standout year for movies.

All best, Craig.